Almagul Menlibaveya.0- Now Traversing West Asia. GOMA Asia Pacific APT7

‘Almagul Menlibayeva uses photography and video to reflect on history, memory and landscape. Employing an aesthetic she calls ‘Romantic Punk Shamanism’, she imagines a pre-Soviet, pre-Islamic realm distinguished by a radical freedom of the human body. Her ambitious new five-channel video installation, Kurchatov 22 2012, revisits Semipalatinsk in north-east Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union’s main site for nuclear weapons tests throughout the Cold War. Founded in 1947 on direct orders from Stalin, the site was finally closed in 1991 after hundreds of nuclear tests. Blending documentary techniques and her signature performance style, Menlibayeva investigates the atrocious ongoing effects of radiation on local populations and Soviet workers.’

The Propeller Group. GOMA Asia Pacific Triennial APT7

“Central to their approach is collaborating with highly skilled media professionals and street artists, linking communities of creative producers. Viet Nam The World Tour is an ongoing project conceived to ‘rebrand’ Vietnam and other nations whose international image has been forged through colonialism, war and tourism. Involving teams of leading graffiti artists, public muralists, hip-hop dancers, and musicians, Viet Nam The World Tour provides alternative takes on national and diasporic identity.”

Atul Dodiya. GOMA Asia Triennial APT7 2013

“Dodiya also produces vitrines filled with objects, artefacts, photographs and appropriated art works, providing provocative new contexts for these. The idea for these works developed after his visit to the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, a recurring figure in his work, in 1997. Noticing a cabinet of Gandhi’s personal effects, documents and photographs, Dodiya recognised this as a way of expressing how a personal collection of belongings can shape lives and become part of a collective memory.” QA GOMA

An-My Lê. GOMA Asia Triennial APT7 2013

“Contrasting with the often polarising or mythologising representations of military force, Le’s images illuminate more intimate encounters such as a sailor waiting with a Vietnamese Buddhist nun in the processing area of a naval hospital ship, or a naval officer being prepared for an official photographic portrait.” QA GOMA

Terence Malick- To The Wonder

Leiko Shiga- Remember that?

Leiko Shiga, my new love….her words and photos….

“The body is simply a medium, I kept a canary inside my stomach”

I like the idea of the canary being a secret locked inside her stomach, the text seems so irrelevant to the photograph but it metaphorically illuminates what the photograph is also pointing towards- a suggestive idea to look for more in life, portraiture and photography.

“What can art gain from cinema? And how can cinema contribute to art?”

“What Can art gain from cinema? And how can cinema contribute to art?”
Kino Der Kunst

From April 24 to 28, 2013 Munich will host KINO DER KUNST, the first event of its kind worldwide to present films by visual artists who take cinema beyond its traditional boundaries and explore new narrative forms. KINO DER KUNST is designed to be an exhibition and a film festival in one, creating a showcase for today’s trends in art and an international meeting point for artists, curators and the public. Spread across various locations, such as the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), the ARRI cinema, the Academy of Fine Arts, the Pinakothek der Moderne / Schaustelle, the Museum Brandhorst and the Goetz Collection, it will feature a competition with generous prizes, a retrospective programme of feature-length films by artists ranging from Rebecca Horn and Robert Longo to Steve McQueen or Julian Schnabel, a wide range of works from specific geographical regions and a number of museum-based multi-channel installations, all aimed at examining the current relationship between cinema and art. The quest of contemporary artists for a globally comprehensible language of the moving image is playing an increasingly important role here – will the cinema of the future find its home in the museum?

Todd Hido

Todd Hido considers the banality and space of landscapes, their luminous colours and stories echo throughout the photographs. Todd also has projects on homes and apartments. I like the idea of documenting spaces we live in, devoid of people and with the absence of life. The light from a window at night, the haze of a suggested narrative.

Zehang Kechun. The Yellow River

Whilst looking through the api website (http://www.artphotoindex.com/api/#images)
I came across this project. It is as much the description of the work as the images that hold this project together as a beautiful lament of art and photography. The artist writes how he feels, as much as how he see’s, honest and breath taking, a sense of the river, a song, a time gone by.

“Who will keep watch on whom? Who will flow with whom?”

Tamas Dezso. Romania (2011, ongoing)

Anthropology ‘the science of humanity’…..

Tams Dezso photographs are a study of Romania a culture and political place in time.

“Spiritual tradition and physical heritage are simultaneously disintegrating in Romania. Time is beginning to undermine centuries-old traditions preserved in tiny villages, in communities of only a few houses, as well as the bastions of the communist era’s enforced industrialization, which became part and parcel of Romania’s recent history. Those living in the reservations of forgetting blend with nature, exhibiting a humility inherited through generations.”